I own the tr-8 and it’s a lot of fun. I cannot for the life of me imagine why ANYONE would want a VST version of it. It’s a dead simple device and all the fun and creativity lies in playing the hardware. In fact, the whole reason for the existence of the TR-8 is that it IS hardware. If someone wanted a VST version of an 808 there are about 1,000 options that are way cheaper than $400.
Unless I’m missing something this is completely retarded.

A vst plugin could access to the tr-8 outputs without changing the main audio interface.
It could also save/recall your patterns within a daw project (song).
This would be a MAJOR improvement for people who work with a daws as the central part of their setup.

Unrelated. Does anyone else feel like the 909 rim shot is ridiculously quiet? especially compared to the original. You have to have the kick snare and everything at less than half volume for that RS to really come thru the mix. Hopefully something can be done as its one of my favorite sounds that just doesn’t have the bite of the original.

Dude, seriously. Its so annoying. The 909 Ride Cymbal as well is ludicrously quiet. I emailed the Roland Support yesterday to see if there was an internal way of adjusting the max volume for each hit but sadly not. Can you email them as well, maybe if enough people do they with sort it out in the next firmware update.